Dionysus

Dionysus Son of Zeus and Semele, also known in both Greek and Latin as Bacchus. According to Ovid, when his mother was killed Zeus snatched her unborn child and sewed him into his own thigh. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysos (1) gives variant versions of his birth. He is unusual in that he has a mortal mother, the story of Semele places his birth much later than those of the other gods. Several stories tell of the fate of mortals who refused to recognised or accept Dionysos, as in Euripides' Bacchae. Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.5 and Homer, Iliad, 6 tell the story of Lykourgos, a Thracian king who tried to expel Dionysos and was driven mad. Homeric Hymn to Dionysos, 7 tells of the fate of mortals who failed to recognise him. He was captured by pirates but made a vine grow on the ship and transformed himself into a lion. The pirates ended up as dolphins. As these stories suggest, Dionysos is often depicted as travelling throughout Greece, often arriving from the east. As knowledge of the world to the east expanded with Alexander's campaigns as far as dionysos, often, depicted, zeus, wine, thought, tell, story, son, semele, resurrection, pirates, mother, mortals, maenads, india, hymn, homeric, greece, festival, fate, east, birth, arriving, animals, accompanied, zagreus, vine, versions, variant, unusual, unborn, triumph, tried, travelling, transformed, tragedy, torn, to, arrive, titans, throughout, through, thracian, thigh, these stories, world, tells, suggest, stories, song, snatched